


crave

by superfluouskeys



Category: Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Student/Teacher, Dream Sex, F/F, Mutual Pining, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 09:09:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11917683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/pseuds/superfluouskeys
Summary: What is it she so craves, precisely?  Is it the person or the power?  Both, or neither?





	crave

**Author's Note:**

> This was a prompt response to a couple of things--the word "crave" and a request for a teacher/student dynamic. Then it turned into a Thing(TM) and took me months to finish.

It is...unacceptable.

Maleficent doesn't particularly relish the calling of teaching; rather, she relishes the cushy research position and the many benefits the university offered her in exchange for her time.  Still, they're young, and most of them aren't completely stupid.  She won't very well stand by and allow bright minds to fester.

It is entirely unacceptable that she should find one of them more than passingly alluring.  They're hardly even real people yet--the oldest among them is at least fifteen years her junior, and this one is new.  Must be, for Maleficent has never seen her before, and she is...unfortunately...positive that she would have noticed.

Thanks to what little benevolence there might be in the universe, she's a transfer.  She's at least nineteen or twenty, then, barring unforeseen circumstances, though the fact that Maleficent went to the trouble to look up this information is perhaps more damning than her student's age.

The most troubling thing about it is that Maleficent cannot put her finger on what it is about this particular person that calls to her.  She is a random arrangement of qualities one could find in any student.  Classically pretty, shier than average, quietly inquisitive, reasonably bright.  At the beginning of the term, she wears smart pencil skirts and pressed button-up shirts; towards the middle she slowly drifts into oversized sweatshirts.  In the beginning, she wears make-up and styles her hair, towards the middle, she doesn't.

In the end, it turns out that the thing that haunts Maleficent the most, more than any of these casual observations, which are a mere symptom of the nebulous cause, are her eyes.  More precisely, the way she focuses them.  Perfectly coiffed or sleep-ruffled, talkative or quiet, her attention is always rapt.

Students participate in a variety of ways.  Maleficent has a reputation for being difficult to please, and so many try.  She can practically feel the anxiety rolling off of them in waves as they sit up straight as boards, never quite looking away even as they scribble notes furiously.  A part of her would love to tell them to dial it down a few notches, but the dominant part prefers to watch people squirm.

Others make as little eye contact with her as possible, and this, too, often feels deliberate.  They're on their phones or computers the entire class, and sometimes she can see the reflection of what they're actually looking at in their glasses.

Somehow, inexplicably, Aurora's attention doesn't feel deliberate, or forced, or even particularly anxious.  Whenever Maleficent's gaze lands upon her in the middle of a lecture, she almost, almost misses a beat, because for some reason, it seems to her that Aurora is actually listening.  That she's paying attention not because she's frightened, or because she has to, but because she has some genuine interest in what Maleficent is saying.

Which is generally bullshit, mind you--what she's saying and the feeling Aurora gives her.  Maleficent has much to say that is interesting, but she is no speech writer.  Generously, she'd say one in every five of her lectures contains information with any application outside of this meaningless course, and perhaps one in ten has some literary finesse to its structure.

And what an absurd thought, that a student is listening because of genuine interest.  What an absolute farce.  If Maleficent has gone soft enough in the head to find a student pretty enough to throw her off her balance, the least she could do is own up to her own idiocy, and not try to make it out to be some deep, meaningful connection.

Sometimes, Aurora bites the top of her pen while she watches.  Maleficent feels almost weak in the knees.  Decides she could sorely use a drink after this wretched charade has ended for the week.

* * *

 

It's...unfortunate, how attractive she is.

At first, Aurora thinks it might be just the voice.  Low and rich and resonant.  You don't hear a voice like that every day, and she's treated to a full lecture twice a week.  She's pretty convinced they're pure poetry, and unabashedly (possibly drunkenly) tells her roommate so, but a small part of her brain wonders if, maybe, perhaps, it's just the voice.

A little later, she's pretty sure it's the jawline.  Strong and angular and artful.  You don't see a jawline like that every day.  In fact, most of her favourite professor is comprised of long lines and sharp angles, and Aurora finds herself more than a little fascinated by the composition, the way she moves while she speaks.

Sometime during her second month, she thinks maybe she's just a little lonely.  She's easily made a few lovely acquaintances since she moved here, but sometimes it feels like no one's really listening, and no one's really saying anything when they speak, and it makes conversations ring a little hollow.

Maybe it's just lack of sleep.  Plus loneliness.  That's what she keeps telling herself, until one day she spots her favourite professor off campus, sitting alone on a park bench, smartly dressed but otherwise looking just like any other person, and still a thrill courses through Aurora at the mere sight of her.

"Hello, Professor."

She looks up, long lines and sharp angles bathed in the filtered sunlight from the trees, and she doesn't smile, but there's a softness about her features that at least doesn't indicate immense displeasure.  "Ms. Alder."

Far too late, Aurora realizes she has nothing to say.  She's spoken out of some uncontrollable impulse, and she cannot bring herself to simply move along.  "It's...a lovely day," she says, and feels like a complete idiot.

To her relief, but also considerable surprise, Professor Dannemann doesn't balk, but rather nods curtly and gestures to the empty space next to her on the bench.  "Would you care to join me?"

Aurora's heart flutters, and she nods emphatically, but she's so out of sorts that she can't think of anything to say.  Fortunately, Professor Dannemann does not seem to mind at all, and they sit together in companionable silence for some time.  They talk a little bit, but it isn't about school or the weather or everyday things.  Instead, Aurora remarks upon the beauty of the blackbirds that linger near them, and her professor tells her that she comes to this spot specifically to visit them.

"You're especially fond of carrion birds?" Aurora teases.

"Perhaps you'll find it a bit on the nose, but I am especially fond of creatures with...misunderstood reputations, shall we say."

It gets so much worse after that.  Before, she could delude herself.  She could say it was just the voice or the jawline or some random arrangement of qualities one could find in any person.  But once she's latched onto some ineffable quality about her professor and decided that it speaks to her soul, she is lost.

She starts to have dreams.  At first they're just the usual sort--vague and abstract and too murky to feel very real.  She dreams that instead of talking about blackbirds, they make out on the park bench, then another time she dreams that they're having sex on the park bench...but that one seems so absurd she realizes it's a dream sometime in the middle of it.  She wakes up sweaty and embarrassed, but otherwise unscathed, and somehow manages to show her face in class without any more than the usual levels of anxiety.

A couple of weeks later, though, just when Aurora thinks she's regained a grip on her sanity, a series of what would otherwise have been small happenstances besets her once again.

Professor Dannemann gives a particularly impassioned lecture, and because it's in response to a question Aurora asks her, she directs much of it at Aurora.  Every time the professor gesticulates in her direction, she feels a jolt of something like nerves and excitement coursing through her.  Aurora can't help but notice that her professor's eyes are completely black, and that they shine when she is invested in something, and become cold and flat as obsidian when she is not.

That evening, Aurora sees Professor Dannemann off campus again.  Aurora has agreed to go out for the night with a few new friends she's made because someone has a friend who works at a bar where they won't be carded or something.  Aurora takes advantage of the blossoming spring air and her formidable sexual frustration and wears the shortest, tightest dress she owns.

She spots her professor walking alone, one thumb hooked into the pocket of her slacks, the other hand holding a flip phone that looks like it belongs in the previous century.

"I'd have pegged you for an Android user," says Aurora, before she has time to think herself out of it.

Professor Dannemann looks up and contemplates Aurora with a laser-like focus that leaves her feeling studied.  After what feels like an eternity of silence, the professor snaps her phone closed and responds, "I prefer to keep a low digital profile."

Emboldened, or perhaps rendered reckless by the look in her professor's eyes, Aurora inclines her head and smiles.  "Running from the law?"

"If I were," Professor Dannemann takes one slow, measured step towards her, and Aurora is nearly beside herself, "would I tell you?"

Aurora's first instinct is to back down, or look away.  Unfortunately, her strongest instinct is to take a step forward.  "I don't know," she says.  "I think I could be pretty persuasive if I tried."

Professor Dannemann doesn't quite smile, but she affords Aurora a quiet chuckle, and it seems somehow to twinkle in her eyes.  So quickly Aurora is sure she imagined it, Professor Dannemann rakes her dark eyes down the length of Aurora's body and back up again.  "I imagine you're correct.  Have a good night, Aurora."

Aurora.  Not Ms. Alder.  Her name on those lips is enough to render her weak in the knees.  By the time she's regained any sense of what she ought to be doing or where she ought to be going, her professor has vanished, as though she were never in the street at all.

The night out is fun, but not especially eventful.  They score a few drinks, dance with a few strangers, and head back to their dorms laughing.

That night, Aurora's dream is too vivid, too real.  In her dream, she thinks she's still a little tipsy, because she decides it would be a grand idea to go to class wearing a skirt and no panties.  While her professor is lecturing, she catches sight of Aurora spreading her legs just so and almost, but not quite, misses a beat in her speech pattern.  Professor Dannemann leans over Aurora's desk almost menacingly as she asks to see her after class, and when they are the only two people left in the room, she throws Aurora onto her desk and buries her face between Aurora's legs.

Aurora wakes at precisely that moment, dreadfully aroused, breathing ragged, and it's a full minute before she realizes it wasn't real, of course it wasn't, and it can never be.

* * *

 

This is getting entirely out of hand.

Maleficent is willing to admit, at least in the privacy of her bedroom, that she has always had a little taste for power.  She's never imagined this proclivity as being particularly extreme; quite simply, in her fantasies, she is always the pursuer, the initiator, the controller of the situation, and she does not appreciate it when the partners she acquires in the waking world make any real effort to shift that balance.

Deriving any personal enjoyment from the power she holds over a student seems a bit perverse to her, and she is thus deeply disturbed when images of Aurora Alder begin to feature heavily in her dreams.  At first she's sure it was just seeing her off campus, and in the tight club dress, that did it, but the setting of her decidedly explicit dreams quickly shifts to the lecture hall, and Aurora dresses as she often does for class, with some...notable subtractions.

For the first time in the ten years she's spent at the university, Maleficent calls in sick.

She must be sick in the head, at any rate.  Her dream was so...real.  So vivid.  Not the usual murky abstractions that separate dreams from the waking world.  The circumstances were improbable, of course, but the feeling was immediate, and Maleficent woke feeling both dreadfully aroused and dreadfully ashamed.

What is it she so craves, precisely?  Is it the person or the power?  Both, or neither?

It's chilly for a spring morning, and rain feels imminent, but Maleficent sets out for a long walk, nonetheless.  Vaguely she entertains the thought of walking until she runs out of paths to follow, somewhere deep in the countryside or the forest or up at the top of a tall mountain.  Maybe there she'd find air fresh enough to clear her head of the lingering images from her dream.

Instead, she deposits herself in a coffee shop and stares blankly out the window at the feet of passers-by while she sips her beverage.  She's not certain how much time passes in this manner, only that her stasis is interrupted by the clink-clink of the bells on the front door, followed by a telltale flash of blonde curls spilling out from beneath the hood of a raincoat.

Maleficent has never known such a feeling of panic to course through her veins as it does in this moment.  It is mitigated only by the way she notices Aurora startle at the sight of her.  Still, she cannot erase from her own mind the images she has conjured, and for what seems a long moment, they lock eyes across the little coffee shop, each frozen upon some imagined precipice.

"Professor," Aurora breathes at last, or does Maleficent imagine this as well?  "Are you...feeling any better?"

Worse.  "A bit."  A curt nod, a slow breath.  "Thank you for asking."

Maleficent is convinced she's imagining things, and to be certain she's acting like a lunatic, yet there is something distinctly off about Aurora's behaviour, as well.  Shy or hesitant are the right words, but the connotation thereof, Maleficent is certain, is of her own design.  Still, Aurora lingers, awkward, as though she does not wish to leave, but can find no reason to stay.

A part of Maleficent would love to tell her to relax, and perhaps to stay awhile, but as is often the case, the dominant part prefers to watch her squirm.  It makes Maleficent feel as though the balance of power, which she'd lost to her own treacherous dreamscape, has been returned to its rightful place.

At last, Aurora manages an assortment of tangentially related syllables.  "May I...I mean...are you...?"

Maleficent almost smiles.

"May I join you?" Aurora amends, a bit too fast, and runs her hand through her hair, ostensibly in an attempt to soothe her nerves.  "You're not contagious or anything, right?"

Maleficent nods, gestures to the seat across from her.  "It was more a sickness of the mind than of the body," she replies coolly, though the truth of the statement is debatable.

"I'm...sorry to hear that," says Aurora as she approaches.  She eyes the seat, then her empty hands, and turns in a rush to order a coffee.

Maleficent does smile then, once her back is turned.  Outside, the rain grows louder, and it beats against the windows so ferociously that it obscures the feet of passers-by.

It is a curious thing, this behaviour of hers, and a large part of Maleficent is becoming quite determined to get to the bottom of it.  Maleficent reviews the relatively small expanse of their interactions in her head and can think of very few instances in which her own personal interest could have been easily surmised. 

What seems increasingly likely, though it is a somewhat objectionable train of thought to indulge so readily, is that there exists in Aurora's mind some small level of mutual interest.

* * *

 

Aurora is a woman unhinged.

Professor Dannemann...Maleficent...leans the weight of her hands upon her desk, towers over it, looms over it, and Aurora has her hands clasped upon the sides of her chair even as a fire rages between her legs.  Maleficent is all sharp angles and dark eyes, watching, piercing, studying, undressing, and Aurora is all shaking hands and shaking knees and burning, wanting, longing, needing.

"Aurora," she murmurs, and it is too much.  Aurora sinks to her knees, melts to her hands and knees, and she crawls, craving, needing, longing, towards her salvation.  Maleficent kneels catch her face with her hands, to thread fingers through her hair, to pull her up sharply, and she _feels_ it--feels the pull and the pain and the excitement and the desire.

"Tell me," says Maleficent, hands still gripping her hair, "what is it you want?"

"You," Aurora breathes, but it turns into a sharp cry as Maleficent pulls sharply at her hair.

"Tell me," she says, lower, harsher, "what you want from me."

"I..."  But she is afraid, embarrassed, even as she has so unabashedly crawled across the floor of the classroom to throw herself at Maleficent's feet.  Another sharp tug upon her hair, though, and the words are rent loose from her lips.  "I want you to fuck me," she breathes, little more than a whisper.

Maleficent draws her close, still clutching her hair dangerously, and her lips are at Aurora's ear when she whispers, "Say it again."

"I want you to fuck me!" Aurora nearly sobs, mad with want, knees quivering from the force of the feeling that coursed through her.  Maleficent releases her hair at last, but without the support, Aurora is left wavering, unsteady.

"Do you really?" she wonders mildly.  "And what reason do I have to believe you?"

Wavering, unsteady, falling, sinking, melting.  Aurora doesn't know how to respond, can't find any words to express herself.

"I think," says Maleficent, "you'll have to show me."

A woman unhinged, falling, sinking, melting to her knees, and Maleficent is naked now, but Aurora has no frame of reference for this, so it's murky, hazy, old details from other bodies that her brain has marked as similar.  She perches herself in her desk chair, Aurora between her legs, and she threads her fingers through Aurora's hair again, and she feels it, she _feels_ it, but it's not real, it's only a dream, and she--

She's awake.  And wet.  And horribly embarrassed.  And _wet_.  She can feel it even before she slides a hand beneath the band of her panties, can feel it even before she slides her fingers inside of herself and feels no resistance at all, and oh, she's never been so turned on in her entire life.  No real person, no real encounter has ever compared to the completely impossible thought of going down on her teacher underneath the desk in her classroom.

Aurora fucks herself hard, tries to imagine how Maleficent would fuck her--longer fingers, thinner, sharper, and fingers in her hair, pulling her head back so her gaze rests on the ceiling, or the bedframe.  She's shaking, losing focus, and she's too excited.  She rubs her clit furiously until she comes, narrowly swallows a scream and turns it into a low, hard kind of groan.

How is she ever going to face her teacher if this keeps happening?

Aurora can't get back to sleep.  The sun's almost up, anyway.  The days are getting longer.  The year will be over soon--her first year in a new place, and already she wants to run away again.  She tries to read, but can't even begin to focus.  She's still hovering on the edge of arousal, and the thought of it almost sickens her.  She's got to be sick in the head, indulging these crazy fantasies instead of finding some way to put them out of her mind, thinking about fucking someone who would never, ever think about fucking her.

She finally decides upon a jog, throws on some workout clothes, chooses some music with a beat loud enough to drown out her thoughts, and hits the pavement.

* * *

 

Maleficent doesn't believe in final papers or examinations, anything that encourages cramming or last-ditch efforts.  She opens her final class up for questions, related to her field or not, and they have a surprisingly pleasant discussion.  She tells them a bit about her research, clarifies the truth of a few wild stories about herself, and then warns them with a glimmer in her eye not to go ruining her bad reputation with the more innocuous truth.

Aurora is strangely silent.  She doesn't ask questions, only listens, and she looks a bit pale.  She's clad in sweatpants and an oversized sweatshirt today, hair on top of her head in a messy bun that looks like it might have recently been wet.

They run out of time before people run out of questions, so the students filter out slowly.  Some shake her hand before they leave, most just wave.  Aurora gathers her things quickly and very nearly runs out the door.

"Aurora?" Maleficent calls out.

She freezes, turns around only halfway.

"Are you feeling all right?"

Aurora opens her mouth as though to speak, then closed it again.  Maleficent gestures to an empty desk, invites her silently to stay and talk, but at the suggestion, Aurora pales further, shakes her head.  As the last of the others filter out, Maleficent approaches.

"Shall we take a walk, then?"

Aurora opens her mouth again, hesitates, closes it, and nods.  She looks red and faintly weepy, and Maleficent briefly wonders whether she may have stepped into deeper water than she's prepared for.  Teary-eyed students aren't her strength.  Teary-eyed people aren't her strength.  Still, for whatever reason, she's taken a liking to this particular person, so she might as well at least attempt common decency.

It's cool and cloudy today, with a kind of electricity in the air that suggests an approaching storm.  Maleficent leads them in the general direction of the park she likes to frequent, far enough off-campus that she doesn't run into very many people she knows, or people at all, if she's fortunate.

"I confess, I'm not very skilled with comfort," she begins as they walk.  "But I shouldn't like to allow you to leave looking so distressed.  Would you..." she rolls her shoulders stiffly, situates her hands in her pockets, "care to talk?"

Aurora is silent for a long time.  They continue to walk, take a path that winds through tall trees and crowing blackbirds.  FInally, she says.  "Oh, I don't know.  Maybe it would be...I don't know.  Sure.  Fine.  I had a...dream.  About you.  Kind of a, uh...an explicit one.  And I'm very embarrassed about ti and very sorry and I didn't want to miss your last class, but I hate myself pretty badly right now, that's all.  I'm sorry."

Were Maleficent another person, she might have laughed at the absurdity of it.  "You had a dream," she repeats slowly.  "About me."

"Oh, god, I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have even told you, I just thought it might make me feel better to just come clean because I haven't been able to sleep in like, a week, and whenever I sleep, I--" she stops short, stops walking altogether, covers her face.  "It...may have been more than one dream," she says quietly.

Now it's Maleficent's turn to freeze.  She finds herself at a loss.  How is she meant to proceed from here?  Propriety dictates that she ought to reassure Aurora, that it's fine, it happens, no hard feelings, turn and walk away.  Propriety dictates that she ought to lock her own feelings somewhere far, far away until they wither and die, that this is wrong, this is taking advantage, this is not only deep water, but dark, and murky, and she is in danger of drowning them both.

Maleficent has never cared much for propriety.

Maleficent takes Aurora's hands, gently pulls them away from her face, ducks her head so that their eyes were level.  Aurora looks stunned, perplexed, but at the very least a bit further from tears than she was a moment prior.  Maleficent inclines her head in the direction of the path before them, places a hand lightly at the small of Aurora's back to urge her onward.

"While I understand the nature of your embarrassment, I assure you it is unnecessary," Maleficent begins.  "For one, as of today, you are no longer my student, and likely never will be again, as I endeavour to teach as few classes as possible."

This elicits the smallest of smiles from Aurora, which Maleficent only just barely catches in her periphery.

"For another," she continues, eyes straight ahead, "you are hardly alone."

"I...what?"

"You aren't the first person with a yen for authority figures," Maleficent elaborates mildly.  "And surely not for me, specifically."  She shoots Aurora a sly smirk.  "I am a rather magnificent specimen, after all."

Aurora laughs then, a breathy, surprised sort of thing, and pushes her golden hair away from her face, and the tension in her shoulders relaxes ever so slightly, at the very least.  Maleficent doesn't know much about comfort, but she imagines this is something akin to progress.

A part of her steadfastly maintains that this is a travesty, a disaster to be contained. Yet, another part of her is so tantalized by possibility that she cannot quite bring herself to let the matter lie.

"And do you feel better, having confessed to the innermost workings of your dreams?" she wonders.  Above them, the clouds have darkened, and thunder rumbles somewhere in the distance.

Aurora sniffles.  "A little.  Still pretty embarrassed.  But braver, maybe."  She hesitates.  "I hope it's not a burden to you."

"A burden," Maleficent echoed.

Aurora frowns, crosses her arms across her chest.  "I mean, it's...I told you because you asked what was bothering me...not because...I don't know."

Maleficent contemplates her, perplexed by the sudden change in her demeanour, like the gathering storm above them.  Again Aurora is silent for a long time, and when she speaks again, it seems like a nonsequitor.  "Did I ever...I mean, did you ever hear about...why I transferred?"

Maleficent shakes her head.  The storm is gathering in her eyes now, wide and bright and violet-blue, and overwhelming to behold.

"There was this guy...he wouldn't leave me alone.  Like I owed him something.  It got...it was..." her frown deepens, and she raises her eyes to the stormclouds.  "I'd never want anyone to feel the way he made me feel."

"That..." Maleficent speaks, before she has decided to, as though the words have taken on a life all their own, and now that she has begun, she must continue.  "That was...a concern of mine, as well," she finishes, stiffly.

Aurora turns those wide stormy eyes upon her once more, and she feels that strange, new surge of panic somewhere in her chest, closing up her throat and numbing her hands.

Maleficent runs her tongue across her lips.  Suddenly she is dry-mouthed and unsteady, and she settles her hands into her pockets one more in an effort to ground them as she formulates her words.  "There is a certain allure to power," she says slowly.  "But none in the abuse of it.  I would never wish for you to feel beholden to me in such a manner."

Aurora steps in front of her, blocking her path.  "What are you saying?" she near-demands, and Maleficent has never thought of herself as a coward before this moment, when she stands confronted with a choice, a final chance to turn and walk away from the pot she has stirred, and she is tempted to do exactly that, no matter the destruction she might leave in her wake.

"Suppose," Maleficent begins, slowly, softly, "we were only two people, not a professor and a student, not a near-pariah and a person forced to leave a life behind for her safety."  She narrows her eyes contemplatively.  "Do you suppose, in that instance, our dreams might not be so very divorced from reality?"

" _Our_ dreams?" Aurora presses, but there's a light in her eyes now, a curve to her lips.

Maleficent offers Aurora the tiniest of smirks, then offers Aurora her arm.  "Should you wish to learn more," she says airily, "you would have to ask very nicely, indeed."

"I think I could be pretty persuasive," says Aurora as the rain begins to fall, "if I tried."

Maleficent allows a small hum of amusement to escape from her lips.  "I don't doubt that," she says, and places her free hand atop Aurora's on her arm as they walk, neither paying the rain any mind.


End file.
